NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #7

[nauticant]

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), has brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims are of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claims to be a transwoman, that is observed as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity.

The Employment Tribunal hearing started on Monday 3 January 2025 and is expected to continue for 2 weeks. The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton started giving evidence on 6 February.

Access to view the hearing remotely can be obtained by sending an email request to [email protected] headed Public Access Request (Peggie v Fife Health Board) 4104864/2024 and requesting access.

The hearing is being live tweeted by https://x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr. This also has threadreaderapp archives of live-tweeting of the sessions of the hearing for those who can't follow on Twitter, for example: archive.is/xkSxy.

An alternative to Twitter is to use Nitter: https://nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

Thread 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5186317-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse

Thread 2: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5267591-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-thread-2

Thread 3: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268347-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-3

Thread 4: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268942-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-4

Thread 5: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5269149-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-5

Thread 6: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5269635-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-6

There's this from Reddit

Again misogyny at its finest.

@Boiledbeetle 🤣

🎶'in the world of little critters I have a lot to say'🎵

Beetles won't wheesht.

Link to the above Reddit thread, lots of support there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1ijcqin/letssendlovetodrbethuptonandapplaudher/

( although, they're not exactly impartial...)

Cheswick, "audacity" has an element of courage. A better term might be "the contempt." I wouldn't want DU associated with anything to do with courage, he is a TW for sure, a Trans Wimp.

Dr Uptons supporters will not have read any of the key information and they all have a wonderful filter that goes “lalala” when people say things they don’t like. The filter also has a great feature that turns any interaction into a transphobic hate crime when they need it to also. Very Nifty! They never see a full situation just cherry pick the bits that fits the narrative. Unfortunately when that filtered situation is held up to reality or in this case an employment tribunal the filter jams and sunlight washes away the nonsense.

I hadn't realised until a PP upthread (quite a bit upthread, am catching up) said that SP couldn't discuss what had happened with colleagues. So they had no way to know why she was suspended. I'd imagine a lot will have thought 'it couldn't possibly just be because she asked for her right in law to a single sex space'.

I read somewhere that quite a lot of staff at the hospital now have 'I stand with Sandie Peggie' in social media profiles etc.

Good that she is finally getting support.

The process is the punishment and the process is insanely misogynistic as is the NHS. NHS policies appear to be ongoing hate crimes against women which enable actual crimes like rape on mixed sex by stealth wards. It's like a real life dystopian novel.

And yet the material they are quoting there on Reddit to show how awful it was for Dr Upton and getting his actual words out there to prove this, thus confirming that they think this is material and accurate -

is lifted wholesale from the Tribunal Tweets coverage -

ie that "anti-trans hate group" that TRAs tried to stop being able to cover the case.

Make it make sense.

If you read through the donation comments on Sandie's Dad's memorial fundraiser lots there are saying they're nurses or doctors.

I read a few responses on that thread. They hate the bbc for not using the Dr's pronouns. The bbc is now transphobic

I do agree with a lot of this. Dr U does come across as vulnerable in some ways and I do have some sympathy and concern for anyone who, possibly under social influences at a vulnerable time, adopts a persona that increasingly controls him or her and is a fragile persona that is difficult to maintain unless everyone pretends it is real. I particularly feel for children and adolescents who are affected by this. But Dr U is not a child or adolescent, he is an adult who works in a profession where he carries a great deal of responsibility for the care of vulnerable people. Unfortunately in order for him to get the support he needs to be able to cope without everyone pretending he is a woman, he would have to recognise that this is a problem and that he needs support. And then there is the problem that some mental health services appear to be captured and, unlike any other issue where affirming overvalued ideas and enabling manipulative demands is well known to be a big no-no and make the patient worse, when the 'magic words' of gender identity are uttered, all that sensible stuff seems to go out of the window.

As we often say for SP the process is the punishment. DU, I have a tiny amount of sympathy as I think they are out of their depth.

I have absolutely zero sympathy for DU, he knew exactly what he was doing and enjoying it. His actions are straight out of the TRA Playbook Section on Destroying the Unbelievers. He was looking for unbelievers to target and destroy their lives and remove their ability to work, he was detailing purported offences in his little black book for this sole aim. Whether or not it was others who suggested he take the route of accusations of fitness to practice against SP he grabbed it with both hands and ran with it to achieve his aim of destruction of the unbeliever.

What NHS Fife and DU fail to understand is that Sandie Peggie has every right, including the legal right, NOT to believe he is a woman and to act accordingly.

We do not have compelled speech or belief in this Country.

I haven’t asked for access to the tribunal, not sure my tech skills would get me across the line. Ive been following here and via Tribunal Tweets. I missed some of the earlier TT sessions, and wanted to catch up. I’m trying to figure out the timeline for all of this. But I can’t seemto find a way to access the earlier court sessions. I went to sub stack but only managed to read-an interesting but completely irrelevant article about a young non binary Canadian woman. Can anyone tell me what I need to do?
Loving the discussion today. I can’t see this ending well for Fife NHS and dr U. I’m sure the timeline and the issues about following proper procedure will become clearer, but I am very much reminded of Jo Phoenix in terms of the wrong person getting accused of bullying, and then the ( very) gradual realisation by the OU that, in fact , they were the bad guys.

I've managed to get it to do it as a woman, and obviously changed the king to queen!

https://suno.com/song/9a3513ad-14c7-4374-bbb0-e408ad52e502

I'll stop derailing the thread now 😏

@Zebracat Go to
tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr?r=1gxdhb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

There are threadwraps for every session.

Whether or not it was others who suggested he take the route of accusations of fitness to practice against SP he grabbed it with both hands and ran with it to achieve his aim of destruction of the unbeliever.

It's been suggested by several posters that Upton may have been used as a tool to manage out SP (for whatever reason).

It would be helpful to know how many other colleagues (nurses, doctors, porters, HCAs) appear in Upton's notes and in what context. Are there Datix entries?

It would be useful to know what, if anything, was done with these notes and Datix reports. Unlike SP who has taken this to tribunal, are others suspended, in limbo, managed out with a pay-off and NDA, or have they gone with an NDA in exchange for an OK reference?

It could well turn into a modern Crucible. We've addressed McCarthyism many times on FWR. At times like this, I remind myself of Margaret Chase Smith and her June 1950 Declaration of Conscience.

In the controversial aftermath of Joseph R. McCarthy's speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith was initially impressed with McCarthy's accusations about subversives in the State Department. "It looked as if Joe was onto something disturbing and frightening," she decided, refusing to join with those senators taking issue with McCarthy. But then she asked to see the documents he was citing as evidence. Reading through McCarthy's materials, she failed to see their relevance to his charges. The more she read, and the more she listened to McCarthy, the less comfortable she felt. Smith began to question the "validity, accuracy, credibility, and fairness" of his charges and came to believe that McCarthy was creating an atmosphere of political fear in Washington, particularly among federal employees.

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/SpeechesSmithDeclaration.htm

Text of Declaration of Conscience: https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/SmithDeclaration.pdf

So the question I have is why this wasn't raised as a complaint by him, rather than against SP.

If there was a woman at work I was scared to use the toilets with, you can bet I'd be mentioning it to HR. DU was apparently in fear of some men at his workplace, but the only person he's complained about is SP - it doesn't make sense.

The problem is that even in the case of Jo P with a very firm judgement against them, the OU haven't held any of those bullying and discriminating against Jo P to account. Apparently they're free to carry on as before and as far as I can tell the OU still is in 'burn the witch' mode for anyone with sex realist beliefs.

The law seems fairly toothless, especially for large organisations with large budgets for whom even substantial awards make a very small dent.

I'll go further. He is not a woman, and no amount of social conditioning, bullying to oppression will ever make me state a man is a woman, or can be a woman, in my lifetime.

She has the legal right to stand up for herself, and in doing so stand up for other women including her colleagues. Those colleagues standing up for Upton, feck off and go and change with the men - there will be few takers, and if there are any, the men will rightly point them to their own changing room.

@Zebracat

Link to Tribunal Tweets page with all the coverage:
https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr

No tech skills needed, really. Just email Edinburgh ET

[email protected]

with the case in the subject line
Tribunal Case: CVP - 4104864/2024 - Peggie v Fife Health Board

ask for access, and follow the link in the email (put blu tak over your device's camera if you're nervous about that). Then join everyone else in Waiting For The Conference Host To Join. When you see the picture of the courtroom that means you are in - run your cursor to the bottom of the screen and click on the icons to turn your microphone and camera off.

Then all you have to do is watch and listen and try to keep your jaw off the floor.

Looking at that Reddit screenshot, it refers to SP waiting for DU, framing it as if SP has sought out DU specifically to confront DU. This seemed to be how DU framed it when telling the consultant about the incident - as if SP lay in wait to corner DU not that SP has gone to the changing room to change. I'd be interested to see how much of the respondent's evidence shows impartial or factual accounts of each "incident" rather than DU's interpretation of the event or SP's actions. Such as DU feeling that SP was comparing DU directly to Isla Bryson - when that is DU's assumption, not what SP actually said. The missing patient incident - the complaint seems to be that SP was answering and looking at the person who was asking her the question, which was not DU. So, SP had a normal exchange with a colleague, having been pulled from whatever she had been doing at the time, then returned to her previous task without speaking to DU who was not from her perception involved in the conversation. I can't see how this is any kind of patient care concern, or any concern at all beyond DU taking offence at SP not stopping to have a chat or allowing DU to interrupt the conversation about the patient with a greeting?

From a TRA perspective, words are violence. So anyone saying 'you are a man' to a trans-identifying man, who wants everyone to say he is a woman, is committing an act of violence. It is an existential threat to the identity.

no amount of social conditioning, bullying to oppression will ever make me state a man is a woman, or can be a woman, in my lifetime.

You know this poem?

Irischild "I will not say it"

@AlisonWhatIsTheMatter
To give some context, no one on these threads has seen all of the bundle of evidence nor been privy to either sides legal advice etc.

We are discussing what has been made public and speculating on what may happen on Monday. Some posters are lawyers or have knowledge of the law, judicial process or NHS Fife etc. so can provide very useful and interesting input.

The discussions in court on Friday about disclosure and lack of disclosure are important. No one knows what they will show but they could be detrimental to DUs and/or the hospitals case. Equally they could be detrimental to SPs case (less likely).

Both legal teams will have worked all weekend and one outcome maybe DU doesn’t appear on Monday. This maybe because they settle the case or may need to postpone to give DU time to instruct their own lawyer.

As far as I can tell, DU is currently a fully intact straight male in a heterosexual marriage with his straight female wife.

One could easily mistake DU for a bog standard basic straight bloke.